Watercolors
by wishfullwriter888
Summary: Sequel to "The Invisible". Now that Jesse is alone, he must learn to deal with his grief and move on, but how can he, when what he lost was all he had?
1. Chapter 1

**Insistent prompting has finally made me started writing about Jesse again! Hallelujah! **

**I would just like to take time now to talk about Jesse. Some people have reviewed that there's the Jesse in the movie, and he is different from Jesse in the book. In my stories, I want to connect and combine the two characters, and in a sense, create my own Jesse, while still keeping with my story, and the beautifully written story by Ms. Jodi Picoult.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing that anyone can possible recognize.**

**Quick note:**

**Here's a brief rundown on the characters with small bios-**

**Jesse Fitzgerald- **

**17, tall, lanky**

**Spiky blond hair, blue eyes**

**Dyslexic( I know, I know, movie….), artistic**

**Aronist, user of various and sometimes illegal substances**

**Sarah Fitzgerald-**

**Mother, light blond hair**

**Glowing appraising eyes**

**Very watchful of Kate, but she's trying to see all her children **

**Vigilant, strong-willed.**

**Brian Fitzgerald- **

**Father, dark haired**

**The base of the family support system, always the peacemaker**

**Kate Fitzgerald-**

**16 (guesstimate age) used to have light wispy blond hair, now much darker and thicker**

**Trying to heal and become stronger**

**And finally onto the story! I'm might put up another bio of any extra characters if I have to later!**

**~*~**

It was like the ground fell beneath my feet, and my world was falling all around me. Just when things started to look up, they came crashing down, letting nothing be spared except for any pain or suffering, but within it, it only increased. It had been raining. Hard. An intersection accident, and like a snap of the fingers, Anna, Anna who had worked so hard to gain the freedom for both herself and Kate, was gone. She was free, a small part of me acknowledged that, yet it was the bigger part of me that was torn up inside. We were close, as close as far age-gapped siblings could be. She saw me when I was invisible, through the dark shroud of pain and loneliness, and brought me back to the family, and for that, I owed her. Big time.

But in the end I couldn't repay her. I watched silently as my parents came to Kate's room, telling us that Anna had died. I had been floored, unable to move from the generic chair I had been sitting in. I remained there for a time, just sitting. Kate soon was wisked away from the room into surgery, and in the end, some bitterness formed. My mother had gotten her wish after all, despite everything.

When I was finally able to bring myself to go home, I was met with the emptiness of the house, even more so now that she was gone. On my way back out, I noticed the flashing light of our answering machine. I pressed it out of habit, and let it play, not really listeing to what it had to say until…

"Hello, um -sob- this is Mrs -sob- and we would've liked to inform Jesse in person but -sob- we know that he cannot be reached due to the um -sob- circumstances. But yet, we had to tell you that she-she died. It was a terrible accident I'm sorry-"

She didn't have to say who. My heart dropped even farther. It was not that just Anna died, but she had died also? That special angel that saved me? How? How? Why? It wasn't fair.

I stormed out of the house, angry with myself, angry with the cruelness of the world. Things had been looking up. Anna won, Kate had won, she had helped me through that hardship, _she_, my angel, and she had won through. And yet we all lost. Gone, never to be a part of the circle of the living. They were gone, gone, gone away.

I was driving, hard, fast, trying to take my mind off of it. I didn't even know where I was going. It was late, and I knew it would take no time at all for cops to start following me. I had to get away, but where?

I knew the answer in my heart, yet I couldn't think it. I just sped on through. I arrived at the beach just as the moon lay high and full in the sky.


	2. Chapter 2

_"I have love in me the likes of which you could scarcely imagine..."_

I hated her. No, I really didn't hate her. My cousin. So beautiful, so full of life. She was everything to me, to everyone around her, a precious jewel, hoarded and perfected, loved by all, envied by none. But such perfection cannot last, can it? He took her away, Him, the one who sits high above the clouds, out of our sight, but much within His. He brought her back from whence she came, and now she's watching over us. What crap. If she's watching over us from up there, she might as well still be among us. She didn't have to die. It was someone's fault, but there was yet to be anyone to blame. It had to be someone. Someone….

My hands curl around a piece of paper, creasing it, never letting it go. It was a promise, our promise. One I was going to keep.

'_You'll take care of him, right?'_ Forever, if that's what it takes.

I hear a car rumbling behind me, and I assume it's my parents. I wasn't like _her_, to be the good girl who always said where she was going and do just that. They had to find me. Everyone always has to find me. That's how it always was.

Sand crunches under boots, I know it's boots, construction maybe, and I hear a sharp intake of breath.

"Are you…" breathes a deep husky voice, still on the fringe of boyhood, and I turn to see who it is.

Someone should shoot me. Right now. It's Jesse Fitzgerald, by far the absolute last person I want to see right now. He's the one with the sick sister who smokes joints behind the field house during gym. He's the lost cause nobody gives a damn about. Jesse…. Jesse….. No. it can't be. She couldn't mean…. not this kid. She must be talking about someone else.

"Jesse," I say bluntly, and the instant change in his expression tells me that I'm not the one he thought I was. For some reason that hurts me, but I ignore it.

"Chriss," he replies harshly, coming up to stand beside me.

"What're you doing here in the middle of the night?" I ask, curious. I knew he stayed out late, but I wouldn't ever think the beach would be his place of choice.

"Sis," he said simply, taking out a cigarette.

I took a step away, thinking he was going to light it up, God, I hated smoking, but he stared at the cigarette for a while, frozen as if he were a statue. Suddenly, he threw it to the ground and smashed it in with his foot.

"Dammit…. Dammit!" he yelled, making me jump.

"Ex-excuse me?"

"What's the point of life? What's the point of it, you just live, get attached to everyone, then you die and suck their life right out of their bodies? What is the freakin' point?"

Anguish. Pain, sorrow, sadness. It was all over his face. Tragedy, grief, loss. My first thought was Kate, it had to be her. She was in renal failure from last I heard.

"There isn't a point, really. But you live anyway. We all are here, walking this earth. Might as well make the best of it. Or rather, that's what _she_ would say, if she were here," my voice dropped down to a near whisper.

"I know someone who would say that too… God dammit…" Jesse muttered, kneading his palm in his eye.

Unfortunately, he missed a tear that cascaded down his cheek. Unconsciously, I lifted my hand and wiped it away gently. His hand shot up to push me away, but stopped as our wrists touched.

"I don't like being weak," he said quietly, not meeting my eyes.

"It's not being weak. It's being human," I retort. I pause, nervous.

"Was it Kate?"

I never knew her. Kate. She had to be pretty, all of the Fitzgeralds were good looking people, even Jesse, in his own way. She must miss school, miss a social life, miss everything every kid in this country takes advantage of. Or maybe she never really knew enough of it to what she was missing.

"No, it was Anna. And…" he pauses, knowing he already said too much, even if it was nothing at all.

_And? _I think, but I let it be. Two people dead in one day, that was rough. I had one, and that was enough to overwhelm me.

"Anna died? How?"

"Car accident."

I feel for him. That was hard, to think that you'll lose one sister, but it's the other one.

"Kate was in surgery before I went home. They're hoping she'll make it. I need to go…"

He gets up to leave, but I catch the crook of his arm as he turns away from me. He looks at me and I see he was trying to escape, trying so hard so I wouldn't see. Tears were streaming down his face uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry," I say lamely, and my face heats up, but he understands what I'm trying to convey to him.

"I'm sorry too."

As he walked away, I pick up the cigarette he left, holding it tightly in my palm. I get an idea, and I hurry home, knowing that grief will haunt both of us for a time.


End file.
